Sebastián Piñera

Piñera was born in Santiago on 1 December 1949, as the third child of José Piñera Carvallo (1917–1991) and Magdalena Echenique Rozas (1919–2000). Among his ancestors on his maternal side is his mother's great-great-grandmother, Luisa Pinto Garmendia, the sister of President Aníbal Pinto Garmendia and daughter of President Francisco Antonio Pinto and Luisa Garmendia Alurralde, who was a descendant of the penultimate Inca emperor, Huayna Capac. He was a nephew of the former oldest living Roman Catholic bishop in the world, Bernardino Piñera, who died in 2020 due to complications from COVID-19.

Piñera's family moved to Belgium one year after his birth and later to New York City, where his father was the Chilean ambassador to the United Nations. Piñera returned to Chile in 1955 and enrolled in the Colegio del Verbo Divino ("Divine Word School"), from which he graduated in 1967.

Piñera then enrolled at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, from which he graduated in 1971 with an undergraduate degree in commercial engineering. Upon graduation, he was awarded the Raúl Iver Oxley Prize, which is given to the best overall student in each class.

Piñera continued on to Harvard University on a partial Fulbright Program for postgraduate studies in economics. During his time at Harvard, Piñera and a classmate coauthored an article, "The Old South's Stake in the Inter-Regional Movement of Slaves", for the Journal of Economic History. After three years at Harvard, Piñera graduated with both a Master of Arts and PhD in economics.

Teaching

Piñera was an economics lecturer from 1971 until 1988 at the University of Chile, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and Adolfo Ibáñez University. In 1971, he was in charge of Economic Political Theory in the School of Economics at the University of Chile, and in 1972, at the Valparaiso Business School - currently Adolfo Ibanez University.

Businesses

Piñera was general manager of the Banco de Talca. In 1982, a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges of violating banking law and fraudulent loans, in an event where over US$38 million was not paid to the Central Bank of Chile, Piñera being the Banco de Talca's CEO. The money disappeared and was never paid. Piñera spent 24 days in hiding while his brother, José Piñera, appealed the order, making some calls to underestimate the crime. A writ of habeas corpus, first rejected by the Appeals Court but then approved by the Supreme Court, acquitted Piñera. According to the Pandora Papers, Piñera's case was thrown out of court due to political intervention.

Piñera was also involved in the Chispas Case, on which a fraudulent buyout of the Chilean electrical company Enersis netted its participants over $400 million. All involved were convicted, resulting in a $75 million fine.

Between 1992 and 2004 Piñera engaged in tax evasion through the use of shell companies, for which he was never formally charged. Due to Pandora Papers leaks, he was formally charged for tax-evasion and bribery due to selling a family-owned copper mine Dominga to his best friend through shell companies registered in the British Virgin Islands.

Piñera once owned 90% of Chilevisión, a terrestrial television channel broadcasting nationwide. He also owned 27% of LAN Airlines (LAN); 13% of Colo-Colo, a football (soccer) club; and other minor stock positions in companies such as Quiñenco, Enersis, and Soquimich.

In July 2007, Piñera was fined approximately US$680,000 by Chile's securities regulator (SVS) for not withdrawing a purchase order after receiving privileged information (an infraction similar to insider trading) of LAN Airlines stock in mid-2006. Later that month, he resigned from the boards of LAN and Quintec.

To avoid a conflict of interest, he sold Chilevisión for $160 million in 2010 to Time Warner. He also sold his shares of LAN in several rounds between February and March 2010.

Piñera built an estimated fortune of US$2.8 billion as of February 2018, according to Forbes magazine. His wealth was largely due to his involvement in introducing credit cards to Chile in the late 1970s and his subsequent investments, mainly in LAN Airlines stock. Piñera acquired shares of the formerly state-owned company from Scandinavian Airlines in 1994, as part of a joint venture with the Cueto family.

Piñera married Cecilia Morel in 1973. They were neighbors on Avenida Américo Vespucio in Santiago. They had four children, born in 1975, 1978, 1982, and 1984.

Piñera was also a member of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington, D.C.–based think tank.

Foundations

In 1989, with Cecilia Morel, Danica Radic, and Paula Délano, Piñera created the Enterprising Women Foundation (Fundación Mujer Emprende), originally called The House of Youth (La Casa de la Juventud). The foundation aims to assist in the development of young women of lower income.

In 1973, Piñera created the foundation Fundación Futuro, of which he was president and whose directors are Cristián Boza D., María Teresa Chadwick P., Hugo Montes B., Cecilia Morel M., Renato Poblete S.J., and Fabio Valdés C. The head director of the foundation is Magdalena Piñera. The foundation's mission is to help in Chile's development of justice, freedom, and democracy. The foundation was renamed Fundación Cultura y Sociedad after Piñera was elected president.

Under the Fundación Cultura y Sociedad (formerly Fundación Futuro), the Grupo Tantauco has the mission of environmentalism, and is administered by Juan Carlos Urquidi. It was created to support the proposals Piñera instituted or planned to institute during his presidency. In 2005, Piñera created Tantauco Park (Spanish: Parque Tantauco), a 1,180 square kilometres (460 sq mi) a private natural reserve he bought and owned on the south end of Chiloé Island, to protect 118,000 hectares (290,000 acres) of the region's unique ecosystem. His foundation runs the park, which is open to the public and is an ecotourist location. Piñera bought the 118,000 hectares (290,000 acres) in Chiloé through an offshore company in Panama. He faced pressure to cede eight hectares to sixteen indigenous families whose presence pre-dates Piñera's purchase and who have spent years negotiating to obtain title to their familial lands.

An additional project, Grupo Tantauco: Derechos Humanos, was proposed in hopes of beginning a reconciliation between the Chilean people who suffered human rights violations during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship.

In 1988, after Pinochet had lost the referendum on his continued rule and Chile was returning to democracy, Piñera offered his support for the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle in his pre-candidacy for president.

Between 11 March 1990 and 11 March 1998, Piñera was senator for Eastern Santiago.

In 1998, Piñera opposed the arrest and detention of Augusto Pinochet in London, initiated by Baltasar Garzón, arguing that it was an attack on Chile's sovereignty and dignity.

On 14 May 2005, in a surprise move, Piñera announced his candidacy for the 2005 presidential election (RN was supposed to support UDI's Lavín). He described his political philosophy as Christian humanism.

Criticism

Early in 2012, physicist Frank Duarte sharply criticized Piñera's performance in the handling of the Chilean–Peruvian maritime dispute at The Hague, deemed as favoring commercial interests over the interest of the Chilean people, and called for Chile's withdrawal from The Hague. Following the adverse ruling against Chile in 2014, several political figures in Chile, from a variety of political parties, also called for Chile's withdrawal from The Hague that would, in addition, imply a withdrawal from the Pact of Bogota.

According to Hermógenes Pérez de Arce Ibieta, President Piñera had pushed for Harold Mayne-Nicholls to be replaced as President of the Chilean Football Board in 2010. Pérez de Arce hold Piñera, owner of football club Colo-Colo, had a long-term interest in removing Mayne-Nicholls from the Presidency of the Chilean Football Board. Marcelo Bielsa, the manager of the Chile national football team, subsequently made headlines for his brief and cold greeting to Piñera in the farewell before the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Both Bielsa and Mayne-Nicholls had good relations with former president Michelle Bachelet, Piñera's political rival.